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That must have been at least 2015 and not 2010, since Windows 10 did not release until 2015.
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Playstation single player games will no longer be ported to PC
- Thread starter Flogger23m
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Hahahahahaha whoops, I meant 2015!That must have been at least 2015 and not 2010, since Windows 10 did not release until 2015.
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I don't know what is worse...this or the discontinuation of physical media.
Either way, back to back anti-consumer acts.
Either way, back to back anti-consumer acts.
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I mean I kind of agree with Sony on this one. It would be like Nintendo porting their games to PC. The point of consoles is exclusivity in many ways. I think Microsoft porting every single Xbox game to the PC is a large part in what hurt their sales. Everything else Sony is doing though ... they can go screw themselves.
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100% I've been digital for 20+yrs now. Prefer it. I absolutely understand the other side of the argument however, it just doesn't matter to me either way.
But in Microsoft’s case they are XBox and they are Windows, and they win either way.
Because They probably make more money from the tracked metrics from the windows users than they do the Xbox users.
And if the are able to retain gamepass users if they leave the Xbox for PC then they are just coming out ahead
M76
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The point of consoles is being an easy to set up cheaper alternative to a gaming PC.
Ironically XBOX's downfall started exactly because of the always online digital no ownership bullshit with the XBONE. And reversing it didn't fix the reputational damage.
I hope SONY fares the same way with their digital only push.
As for not bringing games to PC, I'm confident that will be reversed after the first rounds of exclusives release on PS5 and sales show no measurable improvement over games that weren't exclusive. They wait until the second round to announce the PC ports. Not doing so would mean leaving money on the table, and they can't afford to do that.
But even if they are really dumb and stubborn and stick to their guns, not much of value would be lost judging by the quality of their recent first party games, and the ones announced so far.
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The point of consoles is to make money even if you're selling material, those licensing agreements for every copy sold is why they exist. Rockstar making billions from GTA6 presales, Sony and Microsoft getting a taste of that pie too and they didn't have to do anything except have the hardware available.
This is why I laugh whenever I hear "xxxxx might be selling the console for a loss..." they could give away consoles for free and they'll still make money from them, the price tag is simply there to make sure people who get them are also going to be buying the games.
Flogger23m
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Cost is the other part of the appeal as well. Console prices are going up but they are still cheaper than a gaming PC. Of course with prices going up I would think any console coming out in 2027 is going to see slower than usual sales. A $900-1000 console is going to be a tough sell, especially since console gamers care less about performance and graphics.
It has more to do with the lack of good exclusives. Though their Gamepass model did not help and seems like it caused so many issues for a number of their studios, which Microsoft is rewarding with massive layoffs.
Maybe. The PC port era is when the PS5 was coming out, so a new console release didn't seem to factor into their decision previously. It seems like the Japanese in the company were against it but Playstation is largely American run now. If the Japanese at Sony start having more sway I would expect traditional Japanese stubbornness to prevent any PC ports. However the American/western developers under Playstation have been going off the rails a bit as you mentioned, so maybe they do need more of that Japanese influence.
Without physical games one of the unique aspects of consoles goes away and I think this is something Sony hasn't really thought through. They probably should have waited one more generation at the minimum. Lack of physical media + high price is probably going to hurt their sales.
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Because "fuck you" that's why.
M76
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That's exactly what I said, how did you miss it?
Which makes it even more doubtful that they'll stick to this announcement.
The XBONE online requirement announcement was the single most damaging thing to the XBOX brand. They were on the top of the world with the 360, then they squandered it overnight. There were other factors in the downfall, but that kickstarted it.
Games pass didn't cause the issue for their studios, bad ideologically driven games did. If a game is good and in-demand it does well regardless of if it's on games pass. If anything games pass kept studios on life support whose products weren't marketable. The layoffs are well deserved and should've happened sooner. And the wailing of games journos everywhere makes it all the more satisfying. Even now obsidian is trying to go against the mandate and continue developing Avowed 2 despite the order to cancel it. These people aren't making games for us, they are making pet projects for themselves. And they should be laid off. Imagine a trucker saying to their boss, no I don't want to drive to Detroit, I'll drive to Miami instead, fuck the customer.
And it didn't hurt initial PS5 sales one bit. The troubles began when the price went up due to inflation, the pro costs $1200 here in Europe. And the games sales went down due to the quality of first party games going down. So in a knee jerk reaction they decided to axe PC ports. But I don't think it will help their dwindling sales.
DukenukemX
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The reason Microsoft is porting their games to PC is because Xbox game sales were terrible, and studios need money. PC game sales are always greater than Xbox game sales. Sony on the other hand ports their games to make extra cash. What's going to happen from now on is that Sony will lose that extra cash they could have made on PC, albeit how small it is.
Would you believe you can still build a better gaming PC than a PS5 for $700? It would be a Zen3 based setup, but then again the PS5 is based on Zen2. An RTX 5050 is certainly more capable than a PS5.
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5500 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($81.00 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($79.98 @ Amazon)
Memory: Patriot Signature Line 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL19 Memory ($97.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Silicon Power A55 512 GB M.2-2280 SATA Solid State Drive ($69.97 @ Silicon Power)
Video Card: Gigabyte WINDFORCE OC GeForce RTX 5050 8 GB Video Card ($289.99 @ Best Buy)
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($39.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Smart 600 W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply ($42.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $701.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2026-07-12 09:32 EDT-0400
What Sony should have done is evolve physical media without laser discs. Sony doesn't realize they're fighting a PC battle without a PC.
Sony is no longer a factor. These emulators were released overnight. No worth wild games that can run but this can escalate very quickly.
View: https://youtu.be/y_8PYMdsOI4?si=4PXivFa0CjBwCJOY
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I would not be surprised if somebody built that emulator with AI prompts.
The PS5 runs a heavily modified FreeBSD11 easy enough to work that backwards, the hard part is the Sony AGC Graphics API. It’s entirely custom and deviated from the Kronos standards long ago.
Maybe some “hacking group” will get that out into the wild one day…. Maybe not. But reverse engineering that at this stage would be like reverse engineering DX12, not a simple (or enviable) task.
DukenukemX
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I doubt entirely with AI prompts, but maybe some? Most likely it's the result of ShadPS4 which has done a lot of work to get PS4 emulation working. As we know, the PS5 is also an x86 machine running a GCN based GPU, much like the PS4. The PS5 is also very much hacked and modded enough that documentation is available on how the PS5 works. KytyPS5 and SharpEmu have probably been secretly in development for a while and the recent wave of Sony negativity has probably given these developers confidence to release their work. Especially when you consider that GTA6 isn't coming to PC and they want $80 for the game. Just like ShadPS4 focused a lot on Bloodborne, it wouldn't be surprising that the main focus is to get GTA6 working on PS5 emulators.
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Only caveat I'd make here is that PS5 isn't running GCN and is running RDNA 2* based GPU.
DukenukemX
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It's more like RDNA1 with some RDNA2 like features, but RDNA1 is still based on GCN. Sony wanted the RDNA architecture to retain key parts of the older GCN, which gives PS5 it's backwards compatibility with PS4 games. Clearly not GCN enough as 3D isn't working yet on these emulators.
Flogger23m
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Call me pessimistic and skeptical. I'd like to be wrong though. I would get worried if they spin off or shut down Nixxes who they bought largely for porting. For now they can easily reverse their decision after a year or so. I just assume Sony will be arrogant.
Yes that was the initial factor that started a generation prior. But Game Pass accelerated it more. It is step one in a cloud subscription model, which is where Microsoft would have tried to take things had Game Pass become more successful. I fully expect them (or Sony) to try and do something like that in the future. Subscription only, cloud based. Not even an option to buy a game digitally.
That is only part of the problem. There are games like Doom The Dark Ages which saw some softer sales despite not having any weird ideological aspects in them. A lot of gamers think paying $15 to rent a game, then paying $15 again next year to rent it again, and then spending $20 on DLC for a game that they are renting is a good deal. Never under estimate how dumb many consumers are. And in many cases the deal might be worth it if you only play it once and don't want to play DLC, you can spend $15 and rent a game for a month. Long term Microsoft would plan to increase it much more, and likely discontinue selling copies not tied to a subscription.
Xbox has essentially become the sleazy game rental box for people who like to download games they otherwise had little interest in to play for a few hours. It isn't really a platform you invest in building a library in anymore. Turns out their subscription model entry price was not high enough to sustain studios, and they had not yet reached market conditions to phase out selling games. My takes is Microsoft tried this a decade or so too soon.
Exactly. Which is why I think it is quite pointless. They claim some of the PC ports were not selling that well. Fair enough, but buggy releases and declining quality of the games themselves were the reason. I'm sure 1-3 million copies sold would easily make back the costs of porting regardless.
The only people who think it "weakens" the brand are diehard Playstation fans who think someone playing a game on a different platform diminishes their experience.
SecretStash
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Haha, impatience because of the hyperfocus on the quarterly profits ruined their dream for their dystopian vision of making all their games only available in the subscription. I guess corporate impatience can end up as pro consumer results sometimes.
Just really sad to see the studios take the punishment for bad MS decisions resulting in less sales. Was really looking forward to Avowed 2.
Shitty games lead to shitty sales regardless of ideology. There have simply been a lot of crap games as a result of big mergers and bigger corporations with more layers of management all wanting to tack their own personal vision onto every game. Sometimes that is political, sometimes financial .... and sometimes some middle manager simply has a dumbass idea his kid came up with that he forces down the pipe. There are so many reasons that games fail. No, gamepass didn't kill games but ideology wasn't the sole driving force behind studio failures.
People blame ideology because it's an easy, external scapegoat. It's an outside "them" who is supposedly ruining games (or politics, or...). We don't have to acknowledge that we're part of the problem, or that some of the issues require lengthy, complex solutions that might hurt the industry figures we like.
The game business' main problem is the need to satisfy shareholders with year-over-year gains. That's why we get clockwork releases of generic military shooters, climb-the-tower open world games, mildly updated sports franchises, and of course live service titles. It's difficult to take creative risks as you usually need to be either absurtly wealthy (see: Rockstar) or an indie with nothing to lose. We're not going to fix gaming by purging it of ideologies; we're going to fix it by reducing the dependence on formulaic games that play it safe.
Not sure how would that work, gamepass model can reduce first week sales pressure/reviews/early influencer word of mouth and give chance to more risky affair maybe... but that limited at the end the same force tend to occur (see Netflix productions).
It is not like the fully private like Epic-Valve studio, or private but owned per public company with less of those pressure like the Microsoft-Sony owned one are that different than from the directly publicly owned like Nintendo-EA-Ubisoft-take 2-Projekt Red, so ownership would change nothing here.
As for dependance on games that play it safe, that would be changing gamers purchase habit and that seem hard, the industry side of things take risk all the time, game that do fail are released monthly.
Studio like Ubisoft stay alive because they play Assassin creed safe, but still loose money most years because their swing fails often. Sometime they work like watch dog legion trying to shake gameplay a bit, but often they Skull and Bones.
Live service title not sure if it is playing it safe, they feel like trying to hit homeruns (see Concord), that type of game need a big start and momemtum, it need large users base to gain new users, it is extremely risky, they tend to go down in flames quick or be nice success, the middle of the road failure/small success seem rarer.
Considering that tend to be true for all business and is deeply aligned incentive wise with making good games people love and want to spend money on, not sure why it would be a particular problems, issues with health insurance and some others field seem obvious, seem the obvious best way for games production to work. A public state run studio alternative do not seem necessarily better, rich ideologue running it to push an agenda instead of trying to make money neither.
I can see the top-level solution; if I knew exactly how to accomplish it... I'd be an executive or high-level consultant!
The main thing is to set aside efforts for potential breakout titles, and to resist the urge to shutter them if they aren't immediate successes. You won't get your next Call of Duty/Assassin's Creed/Fortnite if all you ever do is repeat the same core game design.
They are and they aren't. They're bets there will be strong early momentum, but they're also using familiar formulas like season passes and purchasable cosmetics.
This is why I cringe every time I see a bid company scoop up a small studio. It almost always leads to reduced risks and less new ideas. Big corporations want every game to hit every agenda/mechanic/etc even if it doesn't fit and they rarely want to take creative risks. You rarely get new and innovative gameplay from a big behemoth. They iterate and spit out the same. Occasionally it happens but nowhere near what it does in small studios.
All large businesses, yes. Small studios are rarely on the stock market and aren't as tied to year over year profits. As long as the owner is making some money he's not always pushing for more profits all the time. Companies on the stock exchange with shareholders and large financial divisions will push out set numbers to increase profits every quarter whether they make sense or not. It is basically the "cut for the sake of cutting and hope it makes us more money".
DukenukemX
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This is how the economy works in general. People go by monthly payments and not the long term cost. This is why companies drool at the idea of cloud gaming, because consumers really can't count.
I believe Sony that some PC ports didn't sell well, but that's entirely their fault. And no, I don't think it's because the games are buggy. I've had hours of fun with their games and didn't experience any crashing. It's because the games are released on PC around 2 years later when the hype has died out. Sony isn't exactly pumping ad money to advertise that God of War is released on PC, 2 years later. Nobody gives a shit 2 years later. Gamers have a very short attention span, and will quickly move onto the next big game, because there's always the next big game. I'm not playing games like Lies of P that came out 3 years ago because I totally forgot about this game and ignored it because it was $70. It's $20 if you know where to look. My point is you can't expect people to remember a game that was released on PS5 two years ago and expect people to know it's on PC and buy it.
Those people need to get their heads checked. To them it's a US vs THEM ideology, for a fucking video game machine. They need to let Sony worry about the brand. They need to worry a bout their wallets.
I feel that what big studio do in hollywood-games, they use part of those CoD-Assassin Creed money to try to launch and create a new WatchDogs-Skull and bones from time to time.
Or use Witcher 3 fortune to launch the Cyberpunk franchise, sometime it work well and they have a new IP, sometime it fail, sometime in between nothing special to warrant sequels but not a failure.
That often a bit the opposite, small studio as a lot of pressure for getting new revenues all the time (maybe not profits but enough to keep the shop open) that why they accept to make terrible IP/movie game lesser entries all the time.
On the opposite end a rockstar/TakeTwo can loose money most year because they have a giant coffer and ability to amasse debt.
While making GTA 6 Take-two have been loosing money in 23,24,25 and 26, yet the stock market accept it very well because they see future profit, it is an false the idea that there some strong rules about how the stockmarket work, stockholder are at least a minimum of sophisticated case by case affair, the only general rules is all expected future profit amortised in today money with a risk profil, but how and when you make that money take many shape and not a must be every quarter.
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/quote/TTWO/financials/
Operating Income
-108,600
-739,400
-1,143,900
-1,150,600
bad asset depreciation has well over that...
People will tell us one week that the stock market will finance unprofitable AI effort for years and the next that you must have bigger and bigger profit every quarter
, game industry is very cyclycal and the stock market know that.Flogger23m
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And yet Game Pass fans (yes, there are some) will try and argue that it is intended to be cheaper long term for consumers. There are some people out there that are naive enough to think Microsoft is trying to make things more affordable, and not find ways to increase profit margins.
This is also true. I would of course prefer day 1 releases but I can understand a 1-2 year delay to protect their hardware. I don't think it matters that much but I can see some impatient gamers buying a console to play the games day 1-60 even if they know PC ports will come eventually.
DukenukemX
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In an ideal situation, they are right. You could play one game for two weeks and then jump to another game. Problem is that at least for me it takes one to two months to finish a game. Especially if you're a completionist where you must do everything in the game, then good luck. This is why UbiSoft style games are hated because there's a lot of busy work that just ruins the experience. A good example is Kestu's Gift which is a reward for collecting all the 999 Korok Seeds. At some point I just stopped collecting these and Google'd to see what the reward was and then quit collecting. Modern gaming is just peppered with these time wasters that if you don't Google the reward ahead of time then you'd just wasting your time. Especially if the reward is just a cosmetic, which that can go fuck right off. This is why I hate Expedition 33 because once you reach end game, you can then do DLC which has bosses that are a magnitude harder than normal story bosses. By the time I was done with DLC bosses and went to do the final boss, I just one shot him. That's how hard the DLC bosses were, and it took me a while to finish that game. The only way to avoid this is setting the game to the easiest difficulty and then ignoring all the side quests to just finish the game. Then, just maybe I can see the appeal of Game Pass.
Going on that rant a bit more, some games do stuff that REALLY seems unnecessary and seems like a waste of time. Going back to Expedition 33, there's a boss that if I don't offer to fight him then I lose out on an important item and can't get it unless I play the game again. If you progress too much in the game then you lose out of certain boss fights and their items. Even in Lies of P I made the mistake of selling weapons early on thinking that they're junk and that at least I can buy them back if I wanted to. Turns out selling stuff in Lies of P means you can't buy them back. Every game now has a NG+, which is obviously coping from Dark Souls because everyone must copy successful games, but not every game should expect you to do NG+. Another example is Black Myth Wukong where if you want the most powerful armor in the game, you need to do NG+. They intentionally only give you enough pieces to craft 2 out of 4 pieces of armor. I did like Black Myth Wukong, but not enough to play it a second time. Then there's DLC like with Doom Dark Ages where they later on release DLC, which means if you intend to play the DLC then you need go fire up the game again. DLC's tend to take as much time as the main game sometimes. Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree does take as much time to play through as the main game, but not because it really has that much content. The game just has a lot of time wasting methods to keep you playing. Also, the bosses in the DLC are far harder than the regular game. Malenia is a really hard boss and it took me a few days to beat her without the aid of a spirit summon, but the DLC has equally as hard bosses, if not harder. If you intend to do it without Spirit summons then you're in for a long hard fight.
Point is, people should really rethink how quickly they think they can finish games. Game Pass only works *IF* you can finish games within 2 weeks or less, but modern games are made to specifically slow you down. It's meant to make it seem like there's more game than there really is. I spend so much time just traveling in games that I tend to put on a YouTube video while driving or horseback riding in a game. Not a lot of shit that goes on in modern games that needs your attention 24/7.
It was enough to get Sony to stop releasing games on PC. They realized that PC gamers will just wait. In the span of time it took Sony to release their games on PC, there was Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, and Tears of the Kingdom. So many must play games before I ever care about anything Sony releases. While I do like Sony's games, I don't think they're comparable to Elden Ring, BG3, and TOTK. Those games take a priority because I know I'll enjoy those games.
SecretStash
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Cheat engine my man, I don't care about the God mode stuff and infinite ammo. I'm talking about editing numbers that require grinding. It's a gift for people who can't spend a lot of time. Currency require too much grinding? Edit the number. Takes forever to get that one thing you want? Well you can run the hamster wheel for hours to get the golden turd or just edit the number.
Takes some self discipline on making rules on where you cheat and don't cheat, or you risk making a good game boring. But man, it's nice spending time doing the fun stuff and not grinding all day.
Takes some self discipline on making rules on where you cheat and don't cheat, or you risk making a good game boring. But man, it's nice spending time doing the fun stuff and not grinding all day.
DukenukemX
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I don't like cheating in games. Rule of thumb is if I need to grind then the game is trash. If I can't acquire what I need while progressing in the game, then the game designers screwed up. For game designers, time = difficulty, and it works. Killing a trash mob over and over again until you get a specific drop will feel difficult, even if you just one shot the mob. Game designers have learned from UbiSoft not to do this anymore, and have turned to other methods to lengthen game time. Traveling is one of them, and while a lot of games do offer fast travel, they also take away things you could acquire while doing so. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is a good example where you could fast travel, but it isn't really fast. It's faster than doing it yourself, except you can miss out on events and it's really not that fast. Sometimes doing it yourself is faster. For some games, fast travel is unlocked much later in the game, and sometimes far too much later.
As someone who's played World of Warcraft professionally, you do see these intentional game designs. There was a time when Blizzard developers were very open in terms of discussion how they designed the game. Especially GhostCrawler who infamously decided to nerf Ret Paladins "To the ground baby". In The Burning Crusade, you can get a fast flying mount and pretty much go anywhere you want in Outlands. Eventually this was too fast and flying was limited in future expansions to being unlocked . Blizzard devs made it clear they want to waste your time so the world feels bigger. Not a very popular decision. Going back to Ret Paladin nerfs, when it came time for Classic WOTLK, the nerfs were still there and Ret Paladin performance was absolutely trash. Game cheating ain't going to help you here. Point is bad games are bad and sometimes you can't admit to yourself that it became bad. This is why a lot of people who play WoW do not touch what is colloquially known as Retail WoW. Anything after WOTLK is considered bad because a lot of the game makes sure to waste your time. Except in WoW's case, it literally makes them money per month. You have to pay $15 per month to play WoW.
In defence of the Koroks Seeds, I think thats kind of a joke from the developers. You do not need to and should not even try to search every single one of them because after a certain point the inventory upgrades they provide stop being meaninful, so why even bother. But they made a trophy for it anyway for all the madlads. "Congrats, you won! Here is your award, a golden turd. Now, WTF is wrong with you?"
On opposite spectrum, I hate when games hide actual content behind tedious busywork. Hell sometimes even important story elements like Arkham Knight behind the riddler trophies, you have to find them all to get your end fight with the Riddler and a true closure for the Arkham trilogy. Fuck... that... shit...
Nintendo did the whole collecthaton thing right in comparison. At first useful but eventually not and allows you to move on with the game to more important things.
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Small studios are only beholden to their owners, not shareholders. So yes they need to make money but at the same time they can more easily accept steady profits, not always increasing profits. Also, comparing AI stocks to a game studio is ridiculous. Everyone knows that those stocks are wildly overpriced on the hope of some dream (with the exception of the people providing the hardware).
yes but it is not a quarter per quarter affair (like hte example of TakeTwo loosing money most years), it is a long horizon for large studio, small studios are often beholden to harsh cash flow pressure.
Small studio owner take giant risk and a long time before the spending (paying interest on the loan they had to make) and making money, while they usually want to beat simply have parked money in the S&P 500 all along, that will mean increasing profits and they act like it in my limited experience of working and knowing a lot of people having work in them.
Not so much a comparison, it was trying to leave no doubt about the statement it is not true that a public stock must make some profit the last and next quarter to do well, it is a case by case, a growing super fast AI stock would be an exception, an extremelly cyclical you loose money during dev you make money at launch industry like game making is an other one. You can get so big, with enough recurrent revenues and slate to be expected to make some profits every quarter, but up and down depending on the releasing schedule of the heavy hitters will be expected for game and movie studios.
M76
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True you can say shit games are the problem, but when 99% of shit games push a similar ideology, you start to wonder if it is causation rather than correlation.
There are many people trying convince us that it is the big bad corporation at fault for games pushing a certain ideology. But the big bad corporation is a clueless entity, it just wants to make money. Someone is feeding them the information that if only you pushed this ideology a little bit harder, you can tap into the mythical "modern audience". This someone is usually the very devs who we are supposed to feel sorry for when they are finally getting laid off after producing failure after failure.
The ruination of games started when the ideology reared its ugly head, and game companies starter hiring people passionate about ideology but not about the games beyond using them as a platform for pushing their ideology. Many openly admit this. I don't need to go looking for another esoteric cause when this one is staring me in the face. The simplest explanation is usually true.
I wish we'd get the clockwork releases at least, but there is not even that. FarCry6 is a great example of how ideology can ruin even a mechanically sound game. It was an improvement in gameplay over 5 in every way. Yet it performed so poorly that ubisoft never released any official sales figures from it, much like in the case of AC: Shadows, another casualty of ideology pushing.
DukenukemX
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I didn't know if collecting all Korok Seeds are a waste of time until I Google'd it. You only need a little over 400 seeds to get max inventory. The 1000 seeds are just because the game expects you to just run into them while traveling the world. It's become such a problem in games that I often Google before doing something that I feel could waste my time.In defence of the Koroks Seeds, I think thats kind of a joke from the developers. You do not need to and should not even try to search every single one of them because after a certain point the inventory upgrades they provide stop being meaninful, so why even bother. But they made a trophy for it anyway for all the madlads. "Congrats, you won! Here is your award, a golden turd. Now, WTF is wrong with you?"
On opposite spectrum, I hate when games hide actual content behind tedious busywork. Hell sometimes even important story elements like Arkham Knight behind the riddler trophies, you have to find them all to get your end fight with the Riddler and a true closure for the Arkham trilogy. Fuck... that... shit...
Nintendo did the whole collecthaton thing right in comparison. At first useful but eventually not and allows you to move on with the game to more important things.
Game designers get together and swap ideas. They even have seminars. What developers are doing is trying to avoid putting actual content in games and instead find methods to lengthen game time. Copy and paste quests are hated, so developers have turned to other methods. In God of War you have Kratos often go through tight places very slowly. This is a loading screen but also a huge waste of time. So many games do this to waste your time.
The way I like to look at it is that people like to insert themselves into the media they produce. For example Japanese made games that cater to western culture will always put some eastern bits in it, like katana swords and a Samurai makes an appearance in a game with Knights in armor. Nothing wrong with this, but the same can be said about gays and trans who work on games, which will put gays and trans in the games. It's literally their whole world, so of course to them everyone is gay and trans. Which makes it hard for them to cater to a not gay and trans audience, which happens to be the majority of people in the world.
Never played FarCry6 but I can't imagine it being different from other FarCry games. You run and shoot into bases and go back to your base to get new worthless side quests, like it's World of Warcraft. All the game does is direct you to the next killing field. AC Shadows is probably more AC but now in Japan. The game mechanics were already a problem, but the added ideology makes it worse.
M76
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I've seen multiple devs seething about the players playing their games wrong who want to wrestle away control from the players. These are not game designers, but wannabe filmmakers who view games as a lower form of art.
A self insert can be literally anyone any gender and sexuality, it means inserting your own lived experiences, morals, or ideology in a game character. A gay character can still be enjoyable to a straight audience as long as they are well written.
It's not even strictly a problem to have a self-insert character as long as it matches the world it is set in. But when the personality of ingame characters in a medieval fantasy game is that of Gen Z college students or millenial radical feminists, it becomes a problem.
It's not any different, that's why it demonstrates that ideology can ruin good games too financially.
Sorry, not buying this. Ideology is an "it's them, not us" attempt to avoid responsibility. You can have a great game that pushes values and a lousy one that tries to stay neutral.
You think any new hires weren't passionate about games? That they got their degrees and early jobs so that they could spend a few years writing a game that would mainly exist as a platform for their views? That's akin to getting your pilot's license just so you can skywrite your political manifesto — there are much easier and more effective ways to advocate for a cause. These are real gaming enthusiasts who happen to have values different than yours. Deal with it.
You try to bring up Occam's razor, but your theory is practically complex. The simpler explanation for gaming's sales problem is "companies like predictable revenue too much." That means favoring sequels over originals, familiar game concepts, and subscriptions when possible.
DukenukemX
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A lot of game developers struggle with the idea that gamers can break game rules. For most gamers it's not about playing it the way it's meant to be played, but finding broken game mechanics and exploiting it. One example is when in Fallout 4 you come across a Cryolator freeze gun that isn't meant to be opened until much later in the game, but Dogmeat can be commanded to retrieve it which isn't suppose to happen. Or in World of Warcraft where the Paladin Tank talent Reckoning can be charged up with infinite instant attacks, and then that person can go out and literally one shot a boss meant for 40 people. If you wanna know why games today have day 1 patches, this is why. Not just because the game has bugs, but bugs that players can use to make parts of the game easy. This is why older games tend to have a lot more exploits that people quickly find out and abuse, like Metal Man's Saw Blade is considered OP in Megaman 2. If that game was made today, it would get a patch and make Metal Blade kinda meh.
It's not that game developers want a movie, but they want players playing it the way they want it played, which defeats the purpose of gaming. I noticed a lot of new games are having invisible walls again, which is a big no no. But yea, it's bad game design to go back and "fix" these game mechanics.
View: https://youtu.be/pA29nWmyjfk?si=CLqq94mtkcNKXCez
View: https://youtu.be/TqPQ4SNmx2c?si=QlYhYkRE5UIEjBaw
View: https://youtu.be/NUxZ53pF024?si=jgNSRN2xUeD7Hp71
It's never a problem to have a single gay or trans characters, but it is a problem when everyone is gay. You start to wonder how this society is able to reproduce? You know like villagers in Minecraft where they're all men, and yet they can still have children? It's also a problem when a historically accurate game inserts someone who doesn't belong in that timeline, like Musa in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. Or in a game like Dragon's Age Veilguard where we have magic that can change people into dragons, but there's a trans character. If you want to be a man or woman then just cast a spell or visit your nearest spell caster and have it done. In science fiction you can visit your nearest tech priest and have it done. For example Chromie who is a male dragon character in World of Warcraft will take the form of a female gnome, and is considered trans by the community. Dragons in WoW are basically shape shifters and can look like whoever they want.
View: https://youtu.be/RdiXRO_FICE?si=cjHXOscedSSh1ui7
I think the problem was past FarCry games that were already bad but people found out the $60 way. Formulaic games don't work if all you do is just copy and paste quests. Ideology didn't help, but it wasn't the leading cause of the games failure.
Having a passion for something, and being good at the thing you are passionate about are two very different things.